Clough Proverbs Lesson 72
DI #3: Principles in Biblical Training
Today we are
concerned with the study of the divine institutions and these divine
institutions are areas of God’s laws, areas of creation that He has decreed
operate in certain ways and in areas and these areas or these institutions must
be known in order for the Christian to live by the Word of God in every area of
his life. We have worked with the first,
the second, and now we’re on the third divine institution that has to do with
the family. And we have noted certain
details about it; first one of the primary details is that the family is built
on what is called the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:26 and following. This is the passage of Scripture that deals
with man’s purpose on earth. Man was
created to subdue the earth and the family was a means by which man subdues the
earth. So the conclusion of that matter
is that the family institution is not some product of social evolution. It is not culturally relative. As you will often read today in literature or
hear it in the classroom, the family was a primitive stage and man’s ongoing
evolution and now that man has evolved the new forms of social relationship,
i.e., the state, then the state will now replace the previous family. And this may be the desire of the social
planners but it is not God’s Word. God’s
Word says the family is an immutable institution; it does not evolve. The family was here, there never was a time
when there wasn’t a family institution, and there never will be a time in
history when there won’t be a family institution.
Now there are
certain ways the success of the family is measured. Last week we dealt with the divine viewpoint
of family success and the family success is measured not in terms of material
wealth, it is not in terms of happiness at the moment. The family success is measured in terms of
the wisdom of the children of that family unit; the amount of wisdom, that is
the criterion of success or failure.
To contrast this,
maybe make this more acute in your thinking, if you’ll think back to
Notice, by the
way, the Bible doesn’t say that a criterion of success in your family is
whether the children really like the parents.
That’s not in the Scripture. It’s
whether the children respect the parents and have been trained by the parents;
that is the point, not whether they like the parents. Now a lot of parents are overly concerned
whether their children are going to be their fans. Now if you are in need of friends, make
friends your own age but don’t go try to be friends with your children. Now it’s nice if you have friendly terms, I’m
not denying that, but my point is that’s not your objective. Your objective is to train them for the
future, period. And if they don’t like
it, that’s too bad. The issue is whether
they have been trained, not whether they enjoy you, not whether they count you
as their best friend or not. But
American parents are very prone to this kind of thing. We have some sort of a culture in this
country that worships the child; the child is the center of everything in the
sense that he must be pleased and we must have a very present centered
relationship with the child. And again,
this is not Scriptural and this leads, of course, to things that we’ve seen in
our own family training framework where people are more interested in baseball
and everything else that goes on during the week than sitting down for ten
minutes a day or however long it takes to go through the lessons with the
children. Now I’ve never been able to
fathom this attitude, frankly, I can’t even empathize with it. It seems to me the most important thing that
you would cherish till your dying day would be the privilege of teaching your
own children the Word of God.
Now I can’t think
of anything more rewarding than that, yet we have parents after parents, even
in this congregation, that could care less, that obviously are not interested
in their children spiritually and show their lack of interest by the
performance their children make. Now
that’s not to downgrade all the children that are having problems. A lot of children have problems with our
material partly because of the material and partly because they’re new
Christians and so on and don’t feel I’m picking on you just because you may
have problems. But some of the problems
are due to people that have been around this congregation for five or six years
who know better and just don’t care. And
all I can say is I pretty well know who they are now and so when your little
teenager gets thrown in jail and you come to Pastor Clough for some advice,
Pastor Clough will give you some advice and you’re not going to like it. But this goes on and I can see it because
I’ve seen this cycle before; put it off, put it off, put it off, don’t enforce
the Word and you’re going to pay the price.
I’m not, they’re not my kids, and the place of the church is not to
teach children; the place of the church has always been to teach the parents
how to teach the children. You are the
teachers. So the success of the family
biblically is measure by God’s Word as the wisdom of the children, the skill,
their ability to handle themselves in life.
Today we come to
the second law of the family that has to do with the principles of biblical
training.
Now we’re going to
have four of these principles of biblical training and we can only deal with
two of them today, so the second law is four principles of biblical
training. Now all the stuff that I’m
giving you here and some Scripture is basically the same stuff I go over in
counseling. So all counseling basically
is is private lessons on what has been taught.
Let’s go to the
first passage in Proverbs that has to do with the first law of biblical
training and that’s found in Proverbs 1:7, we’ve covered this verse before but
it’s an excellent introduction to the first principle. The first principle is that biblical training
begins with humility before God. So your
first principle, then, is to recognize the authority of the God of the
Bible. That’s the starting point of all
training; to recognize authority, authority of the God of the Bible, period;
Supreme authority, no competition and no other authority; this is the only
Supreme authority, the God of the Bible.
This is what is taught in Proverbs 1:7.
Now the reason we present this as the first principle of biblical
training is that if this isn’t laid in your family, laid down carefully in the
understanding of the children they’re never going to respect your authority,
because you don’t have authority unless God has given you the authority, and
children can sense this. So you have to
build your authority on God’s authority.
So everything hangs on the first point… everything hangs on the fact
that God is the final authority, therefore it says:
“The fear of the
LORD,” and this doesn’t mean running around in absolute terror, it means
respect, “The respect of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge.” And this means that nothing is going to be
accomplished unless there is an actual, literal, daily respect for God’s
authority. Now this applies in the
non-Christian family as well, even though the non-Christian family doesn’t
express this fully because of blindness and so on, even the non-Christian
family, a smart one, will recognize there are certain fundamental laws that
hang over man, and that man to be successful must obey these laws. Not that’s at least a partial recognition of
God’s authority. But in the Christian
home it’s even more acute in the sense that the children recognize that God is
the one who gives the parents the duty to train the children; God is the one
who judges the parents if the parents don’t train the children, and God is the
one who is going to eventually make the children responsible for their own
choices. So God is the final authority. And your belief toward God influences your
belief toward everything else.
Now let’s look at
another verse in Proverbs that’s very similar, it’s also part of the section
we’re going through, Proverbs 15:33.
Again the first principle, that God is the final authority. In verse 33, “The fear of the LORD,” “The
respect of the LORD is the instruction of wisdom,” now the word “instruction”
here is the Hebrew word musar, if you
are in doubt about some good examples of musar,
that means the Hebrew word for severe training, it was the word used for the
forty years in the wilderness when God told them verbally what to do and he
also applied physical pressure to get the point across; that’s musar, it involves both verbal
admonition and physical enforcement. And
as I say, if you are lacking for some colorful illustrations of musar we have a book in the library just
for you, it’s called The Marine Machine,
and it’s a photograph essay of the training of the Marines and that is a good
example of musar. You can overlook some of the language in it, it
is a good, beautiful illustration of musar.
So the word musar in verse 33, “The musar of wisdom,” that teaches right
away that wisdom doesn’t come easily; wisdom comes through a severe training
program over time and the basis for that severe training program over time that
eventually results in chokmah, or
wisdom, is respect for the Lord. You
see, everything goes back to that; if you don’t have respect for the Lord then
you can just flush everything else, absolutely flush everything else. Education in the Scripture is always grounded
on authority and you don’t have education unless you have authority. There are some young people in here who have
gone through Tech and are now teaching and they were telling me not too long
ago how they discovered in the classroom that this really works; you can’t
teach unless you assume authority over the students in that classroom. No training, no education occurs unless
there’s authority. Now that doesn’t mean
that everybody has to believe what you say, that’s not the point. They have to have respect for the order in
that classroom, and respect for your authority as the leader in the training
process. Now this has to occur obviously
at point to point in the Christian life.
Now I’ll give you
some examples of where this doesn’t happen so you can again see clearly what
we’re talking about by “the musar of
wisdom. “The musar of wisdom” might bring into your life circumstances such as
you have something that I don’t like to do.
And this is one of the first lessons in chokmah, you learn to do what you don’t like to do whether you like
to do it or not, you do it because it’s the right thing to do, period. Let me show you, let’s take a little
hypothetical case and show you what happens when a simple thing like that isn’t
learned in the home, that when God tells you to do something He wants you to do
it. You know God never asks; my
observation as pastor is that when God leads you, He tells you what He wants
you to do; He doesn’t ask for your advice, and he doesn’t expect you to give
Him advice and He doesn’t expect you to correct Him. He expects you to obey Him when He makes
something clear.
So this little
lesson, I don’t like to do something, suppose you have a kid who’s about 8 or 9
years old, and they have already learned that there are ways of worming out of
things they don’t like to do; it might be eating beans for dinner, it might be
doing some chores around the house, it might be picking up their own room or
something but it’s some little thing they don’t like to do. And so the parents, being imbued with human
viewpoint and modern theory say well, that’s too bad, so and so doesn’t like to
do it. So we’ll just let so and so not
do it. So little Johnnie doesn’t do it
and little Johnnie learns that whenever he has something he doesn’t like to do
he has been trained by his parents over many years… now the parents haven’t sat
down and said we’re going to train you, but in effect they have; they have
trained him that whenever he doesn’t like to do something he doesn’t have to do
something. And so that rocks fine until
about senior high and then about senior high he begins to notice something
that… he starts out personal relationships with members of the opposite sex and
these queer beans on the other side of the fence sometimes get him angry and
may make him do things that he doesn’t like to do. So he begins to have all sorts of personal
relationship problems with members of his own sex and members of the other sex.
And then he goes
to college, and at college he really has a problem because mommy and daddy
aren’t around to run down to the teacher or the professor and ask the
professor, look, Johnnie couldn’t do his homework last night because he was
sick blah, blah, blah and so forth. They
just flunk, and it’s a big shock in the first semester in college when all
these undisciplined behavior patterns just come on out, they all hang out. And along toward the end of the semester big
F’s begin to show up. And then he’ll
have a problem called depression, all sorts of mental depressions happen toward
the end of the semester, all sorts of aberrant behavior, weirdo stuff goes
on. Now why is that there? Simply because of a mental pattern of laziness
that has been built up over many, many years, and it goes back to nothing more
profound than the fact that I don’t do what I don’t like to do. And so he comes home with depression, I’m
going to flunk out and so his parents, all right, you come home and we’ll send
you to psychiatrist. So after $50 an
hour for two years he learns all about his past and learns to feel sorry about
his past, he learns to feel his real problem is his parents; his real problem
is he was dropped on his head when he was a baby, his real problem was
something else, when his real problem was just nothing more than laziness and
violation of the laws of the way creation operates.
So, “The fear of
the LORD is the musar of
wisdom.” Without that, you have
nothing. “…before honor is humility,”
that’s the principle, you can’t have success, honor is the success, honor is
the enjoyment, honor is the accomplishment and you can’t have the
accomplishment unless you’ve first got humility. Humility before what? It doesn’t mean a mouse crawling around;
humility means that you have a submissive attitude toward God’s authority. Remember the most submissive people in
history have the culture of the Puritans and yet the toughest people, in the
halls of debate and on the battlefields were the Puritans. They weren’t mice but they were very, very
humble people before God. And it made a
difference; it put iron in their backbone.
Turn to Proverbs
21:30, a similar principle. All training
in the home begins with God as the final authority. Now in practice one way of following this out
in the home is to use the Bible when you talk to children about something. It doesn’t mean you cart if off the shelf
every time but when you sit down and have a discussion with children let the
Bible be physically present so they see where you are getting it from, and it
reminds you that it’s not just your idiosyncrasies or what you want at that
hour and so on, it goes back to what God’s Word has said. So get the Bible out there where people can
see it.
Proverbs 21:30,
“There is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against the LORD.” Now the word “against” means in front of or
in competition with, and this is an attack against all human viewpoint
autonomous wisdom; wisdom of men, wisdom that would set itself up to compete
with what God has said, and what it simply says is there isn’t any; there is no
competition, God is final authority.
Now in these three
verses that we’ve gone over in the first principle I have tried to be as
dogmatic as possible that God is the final authority because I know that in
practice this is very hard to implement.
It’s hard to implement because you’ll be involved in a family situation,
a big squabble or something, and you’ll start to put out what you say is right,
and what the other person says, and so you have these two people firing at each
other, well I think… well I think, kind of thing. And it just goes on like this. Now that pattern, if it’s in your family, has
to be busted up, broken, you have to say what does God say? And consciously make it a point, and the
habit pattern is not going to be broken unless you actually get the Bible out
and being to work with it. Once you do
the pattern and the pattern is established, fine.
That’s the first
principle, God is the final authority.
Now, second principle of training is built on the first one. After you have humility before God you’re
going to have humility the God-authorized trainers, we call parents. See, it all follows; the first principle, God
is the final authority. Next principle,
since God has ordained parents as the trainers, then you will have humility
before parents. Let’s go to the classic
text in Exodus 20 and then we’ll come over to Proverbs commentary on Exodus 20.
Exodus 20:12, the
Ten Commandments, “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long
upon the land which the LORD thy God gives thee.” Paul remarked this is the first commandment
with promise. Now why, what does it mean
if you honor your parents then the days are going to be long. Obviously it’s talking about literal physical
life, longevity will increase with honoring of parents. Now why is that? Think back to Genesis 1:26, what was the
original purpose for family. The Bible
is not disconnected with all sorts of random statements. There are reasons for it. In Genesis 1:26 the family was established to
do what? To train children. In what?
How to subdue the earth. All
right, every child in going to face two alternatives, either he subdues the
earth or the earth subdues him. Now
that’s the only option any child from a family has. Either the child is trained how to conquer
life or life conquers him. Now we have a
lot of failures because no time in our history have we ever had the number of
teenage suicides and attempted suicides that we’re having today. 15, 16, 17 year old people committing
suicides by the hundreds across this nation.
Now what does that show? It shows
you they are being subdued; they’re not subduing anything, they’re not
conquering their problems, they’re not solving life’s problems biblically,
they’re allowing life’s problems to mash them into the sidewalk. Why?
No training or if they were exposed to training they rejected it. So the suicide rate and everything else is
just simply symptoms of the lack of training.
And the point on
this promise is “thy days may be long” means physically, the person who is
subduing the earth, the person who is successful in life, is going to be free
from the physiological effects of worry and so on, and he will live longer, all
other things being equal. That promise,
in verse 12, is as valid today as it was in 1440 BC when it was given on Mount
Sinai, and it applies to both Jews and Gentile, it applies to all men
everywhere, that honoring parents, we’ll study what “honor” means in a moment,
but honoring parents as a genuine operating principle will always increase the
longevity because it increases your capability to cope with life.
Now what is the
central point of coping with life. Let’s
start out with a baby and look at how he is and let’s see how he turns into an
adult. Every person faces situations in
life; every person is going to respond to those situations a certain way. So you have a situation and you have a
response to it. Now what controls your
response to any given situation? As
creatures made in the image of God, two things.
First, your understanding of an issue, God doesn’t train you like a dog,
He trains you like a person made in His image and He expects you to understand
certain things. So you have
understanding, hopefully a divine viewpoint framework in the soul. Then, because life is so complicated and you
can’t sit down and think every little thing you’re going to do; imagine, for
example, sitting down to a table to eat and thinking let’s see, what does the
fork do here, and consciously think of just getting the fork to your
mouth. Now obviously you learned years
ago how to get the fork to your mouth.
People generally are trained to get the fork from the plate to their
mouth. That is called habit. Now the Bible says that what is going to help
is the cultivation of godly habits. Now
people, all people have habits, bad habits or good habits, ungodly ones or
godly ones, but here’s what you’re aiming for.
That’s the mark of the adult in Scripture, that when they meet a
situation in life they have a divine viewpoint framework to cope with it and
they have godly habits so they can meet their situations quickly.
Let’s look at a
baby; what does a baby do? The first
thing, the baby has a problem what does he do?
Yell his head off; 2:00 or 3:00 o’clock in the morning, it doesn’t make
any difference, he wants the problem solved now. If he has to go to the bathroom he voids
right there. Now that’s the mark of an
infant; he meets a situation and he wants a solution now, present tense. The mark of an adult is that he has patience
to put the solution off into the future and to work patiently toward that
solution. Now you see, the older people,
we won’t call them adults, but older people who have grown up, teenagers and so
on, have grown up and have never learned this principle operate just like
babies. They’re infantile; if they can’t
have their right way, their own way in a social relationship, if they can’t
have their own way in school, what do they do?
Just what they do when they’re babies, yell, throw a tantrum, throw a
fit and so on; it’s nothing more than infantile behavior. You might as well just put diapers on, void
their bladder along with everything else; really, there’s no difference. House breaking is just a minor point but if
you’re going to throw tantrums as an adult you might as well walk around with
diapers on because there’s absolutely no difference in throwing tantrums and
wanting a solution right now and just voiding right where you are. That’s exactly the same kind of principle.
So that’s what we
eliminate, hopefully, in training and that’s what it means, honoring your
parents will result in. Now we’ve got to
study the word “honor” because that is misinterpreted in our day. What does “honor” mean? We have teaching that well look, honoring
means that you have to obey your parents in everything from the time that
you’re an infant all the way on up to the time you’re sixty, if you parents are
still around. In everything they say you
have to obey. And I find Christians that
are honestly being taught this in Scripture.
About once a semester this becomes an issue here, because about once a
semester it always happens, some college student becomes a Christian, accepts
Christ, and what happens? The parents
say the Bible is interfering with your social life, you’re getting too much
religion, now we’re not going to allow that so I don’t want you going to Bible
class and I want you to go out and date more.
You say you can’t believe that; you should see some letters I get. This kid is a religious fanatic, the Bible is
bothering them. Sure, making a change in
their life, you bet it’s bothering them.
But the parents will come down and say you can’t do this, and this
becomes very, very stick at this time and usually the advice is as long as
you’re economically dependent upon your parents you’re their minor and you have
to stick with it. If you think you’re
big enough to economically hack it by yourself, fine, go ahead and do it and disobey.
But let’s look at
two areas for honoring parents and let’s make a clear distinction between the
relation of a child or we’ll put a minor to his parents under the honoring
principle and an adult to their parents under the honoring principle and the
Bible makes a clear distinction; you do not have it all smeared together into
one mess. Let’s turn to 1 Timothy 5:8,
here is what honoring parents in the adult sense means. Here’s one illustration of honoring parents,
this is an adult honoring their parents; they would be older people this is how
they are to be honored. “If any provide
not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he has denied the
faith, and is worse than an infidel.”
That principle means many things but in context it obviously means
taking care of the aged ones, including your parents.
Another
illustration if you want a clear cut situation based on 1 Timothy 5:8, turn to
the Gospel of John 19:26; Jesus disposition of His mother at the cross. Jesus is dying on the cross and He looks down
from the cross and He sees His mother.
What happened to Jesus’ father is a mystery, nobody knows, but his
father apparently died early in life and Jesus Christ was the one who held the
family together, He was the oldest child, and He had later brothers and
sisters, you’d have to call them half brothers and half sisters, but in John
19:26 He looks down and He says, “When He saw His mother, the disciple standing
by whom He loved,” that’s John, “He said unto his mother, Woman, behold your
son! [27] Then He said to the disciple,
Behold your mother! And from that hour
that disciple took her into his own home.”
Now there is Jesus Christ providing a physical need for His mother and
He did it in the hour of His death.
There He is honoring His mother.
Now, continuing
with the same line of reasoning, this is Jesus as an adult; is He fulfilling
the Law? Yes. Is therefore He’s fulfilling the commandment
to honor His parents? Yes. Is this an example of it? Yes.
Does this mean that Jesus obeyed His mother in all her wishes? No.
Turn to John 2, His mother makes a statement here and Jesus
disobeys. Why? Because Jesus at this point is an adult and
they’re at a wedding feast, they both are invited, verse 1. John 2:2, “And both Jesus was called, and His
disciples to the marriage. [3] And when
they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus said unto Him, They have no wine.” And she wanted Him to do something right
then. And the way He finally wound up
doing it, He rebuked her in verse 4, “Jesus said unto her, Woman, what have I
to do with you? Mine hour is not yet
come.” Now that sounds rude the way it
reads in your English; it is not rude.
His point was that mother, your idea of God’s plan for My life and God’s
idea of God’s plan for My life are two different things, and My time has not
yet come to fulfill My mission; don’t ask Me to. And so with this, very quietly, politely and
in an honoring way He disagrees with His parents and that is allowable on
Scriptural grounds when you are an adult.
Now let’s go to
the minor problem; let’s turn to Ephesians 6:1 for the principle, then we’ll go
back and look at Jesus again. In 6:1
right in the context where Paul discusses the fifth commandment, he says,
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord; for this is right.” Now there he’s addressing minors and he’s
telling them that honoring in the case of the minors means obedience, as well
as other things. The adult means more or
less provision for. And he says I want
you to obey your parents.
Now let’s turn to
see an incident in Christ’ life when Jesus Christ was told by His parents
something that was human viewpoint and let’s see how he handled it. Turn back to Luke 2 and see the famous temple
incident. Here Jesus faced something,
His parents were wrong, completely wrong, but how did Jesus handle it? Luke 2:42, here’s the case, Jesus is a minor,
He’s under the authority of the third divine institution and his parents come
out with a whole pile of human viewpoint.
Jesus is right, His parents are wrong.
You couldn’t ask for a better illustration. Now many times children think they are right
and think their parents are wrong. In
this case it was actually true. So this
example should serve as an example for all other situations.
Luke 2:42, “When
He was twelve years old,” so obviously He’s a minor, “they went up to Jerusalem
after the custom of the feast.” Jesus,
in verse 43, stayed behind, you remember the incident. Joseph and his mother did not know of it. And they went on, in verse 44, and they
didn’t find Him, verse 45. Verse 46 they
start looking for Him, while in the temple He is having this discussion. Remember, He’s been in Jerusalem now for
three days without His parents, 12 years old in the big city of Jerusalem. It was a big city for a 12 year old to be
lost in. And obviously Joseph and Mary
aren’t too (?) that they went for a whole day’s journey out, another day’s
journey back, and another day looking around the city for Jerusalem, for three
days for this little kid, where is the brat?
And so this is their attitude when they come to Him.
Luke 2:48, “And
when they saw Him, they were amazes; and his mother said unto Him,” notice who
spoke first, “His mother said, Son, why have you thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee
sorrowing.” See, father Joseph is too
steamed up to say anything at this point and His mother breaks the news, and so
she comes in, she starts to chew on Him.
And in verse 49, again it sounds like He’s being rude; it is not. “How is it that you sought Me? Did you not know that I must be about My
Father’s business? [50] And they
understood not the saying which He spoke unto them.” From His point it sounds like He’s not
obeying, but I’ll show you He is just a moment.
When He says, “My Father’s business” in verse 49, that is a signal that
at this point in Jesus’ life He understood He was the Messiah;
He had His
messianic consciousness already developed by age 12 and at this point He knew
He was the Messiah and therefore He belonged in the temple. And when he said “My father’s business” it
wasn’t some young kid arrogantly talking back to His mother. It was in this case He was saying in the
first part, “How is it that you sought Me,” now Jesus is not trying to be
snippy with His parents at this point.
What He is saying is, if I were to make an extended paraphrase, He’s
saying why is it that you don’t know Me better than to look for Me here;
if you knew I was lost where would be
the logical place I’d be? I’d be here at
the temple. And because… understand, Mary
it’s only twelve years before she had a virgin birth, obviously quite a
memorable event, but it doesn’t seem to be remembered here in the context of
this situation. And He says mother, you
should know Me better than that, that naturally I’d be here, isn’t this why I
was virgin born, isn’t this the calling of My life, to be here at the
temple? So it’s not at this point an
attempt to undermine His parent’s authority.
Notice, He’s very diplomatic, actually in verse 49, He’s taking His
parents back to the Word. See. And He’s doing it in a very diplomatic
way.
Then, the key to
the passage is verse 50, 51 and 52, that’s the heart of it. “They understood not the saying which He
spoke unto them.” So His parents still
didn’t recognize the point. Now did Jesus
sit there and argue with them until they understood the point. No.
What did He do? Verse 51, “He
went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them,” now how
about that. Now here was a teenager that
knew He was God, and He really meant it, not like some, He really meant
it. This was literally true. But what does the Scripture say? He “was subject to” his parents.
And “His mother
kept all these sayings in her heart,” and the result, verse 52, the third
divine institution was necessary for Jesus’ development in His humanity. Notice that too. Jesus, by the time of 12 was not ready to go
out in ministry, He wasn’t going to be ready until many years later and He was
wise enough to know that he needed more training and that training could not be
given in the temple by the doctors, it had to be given by His parents. Jesus forsook, you might say, the educational
establishment for His own home. He left
the educational establishment and went back to his home; his home was more important
than the university, and it was there that He “increased in wisdom and
stature.” There’s a lot in that one and
that certainly is the counter example for the problem.
Now let’s go back
and review the point. What does honoring
mean in Exodus 20? It depends, if you’re
an adult honoring means to care and provide for your parents; it does not mean
that you are to actively submit to them in every point. As a child it means you submit to them, as
Jesus did in Luke 2.
On our way back to
Proverbs stop at Isaiah 45:9-10 for an interesting prophetic remark on
children. This is a parallelism; it is
two condemnations by the prophet Isaiah.
I want you to notice what is placed with what in this parallelism. “Woe unto him that strives with his
Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the
potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay
say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? Or thy work, He has no hands? [10] Woe unto him that said to his father,
What did you begat? Or to the woman, Why
have you brought me forth?” That is an
idiom, and expression which means they’re back-talking to their parents and
verse 10 is a very clear prophetic denunciation of little children telling
their parents what they will and what they will not do. Why do we know that? It’s parallel with verse 9. What’s verse 9? Verse 9 is talking about the sovereign God
who has decreed certain things will come to pass, period, over and out. And the creature says I don’t like that, what
do you do it that way for God, if you’d asked me I could have done it
better. That’s back-talking God, and so
verse 10 is back-talking parents and the prophet sees no difference between
back-talking God and back-talking parents.
Now let’s come to
Proverbs and see a string of verses on this principle. The second principle, once again, is humility
before God’s authorized trainers, parents.
Proverbs 13:1, here’s a series and again, as we only can do by [small
blank spot] proverbs verse after verse after verse, till you pick up the proper
attitude. Please, while we’re studying
these principles, understand the reason why I’m going through so many of these
verses is not just to give you a whole string of verses but so you can kind of
pick up an attitude about this thing. There’s
an attitude and I can’t teach that, you have to kind of find that
yourself. But watch for the attitudes
that are involved here, that’s what really counts.
Proverbs 13:1, “A
wise son hears his father’s instruction, but a scorner [scoffer] hears not
rebuke.” Now the family, the third divine
institution, is built to provide wisdom for children. The wisdom is going to be called, in the Old
Testament, inheritance. Now you think of
inheritance as material, you’ve got a little mind-expanding exercise ahead of
you then. Inheritance biblically means
you inherit wisdom from your parents through the family unit, just as you would
inherit physical property through your parents in the family unit, so also you
inherit wisdom. And the instructions in
Proverbs, basically to the wise son, is that the son claims his
inheritance. This is going to be part of
his mentality; you’ll see it verse after verse after verse. The wise son is what he… he wants to receive
the inheritance from his parents, but when he says inheritance he doesn’t mean
what the American thinks by the word inheritance. The American thinks material wealth; the Jew
thinks, yeah, material wealth and land but also wisdom, I must inherit that
from my parents. I must have their
wisdom. So it’s a considered attempt to
capture wisdom.
“A wise son,”
notice heareth, is in italics, it’s
supplied, a legitimate supply, “A wise son heareth
his father’s instruction,” it’s the word musar;
now isn’t interesting. The father and musar, what does that say? That the father is telling the child, yes,
he’s sitting down and talking to the child, yes, but it also means he is
corporally punishing the child when necessary; musar includes both verbal admonition and corporal punishment. Now the next word is a new word that we have
to learn in Proverbs. We’ve learned
several words so far, kesil,
remember the word for a person on negative volition, a person in rebellion
against God, a person who had developed darkness of the heart. Now the next word for “scorner” is ltz, probably the best way is l-t-z, it
looks like this in the Hebrew and that’s about the way it sounds, now a ltz is the most powerful word for a
person who has kicked over the [can’t understand word] just absolutely, totally
rebellion. So the word ltz, now in
proverbs coming up you’re going to have to know ltz, because it’s going to be used with another word and the whole
principle depends on it. So ltz, I’m going to point to when ltz is there in the original text so
you’ll know; ltz means that this kid
had gone on rebellion toward his parents, he is probably, by this time a
teenager, and he has allowed his rebellious attitude to compound and compound
and compound. So the point here is that
the ltz never hears a rebuke; the
rebuke is what his father is trying do to straighten him out, but by the time
he’s a teenager and he’s inherited this pattern of rebellion, he doesn’t
hear. Now certainly you’ve been around
situations where you’ve seen this.
Nobody here should
have any problem accepting this truth from the Word of God. You have all seen children who have been told
and told and told and told and disciplined and disciplined and disciplined and
told and told and told and disciplined, [can’t understand phrase]. Well, now you know a word to call them
besides a damned fool, ltz. Call them ltz,
nobody will know what it’s doing except you’ll have the pleasure of being
accurate in your labeling. So the ltz is a person who has totally rebelled
against the authority of their parents.
The ltz, unfortunately is
aided and abetted by present educational philosophy; it goes back to John
Locke, and the idea of a tabula rosa or
a blank mind; the idea of the blank mind is if you start your education, you
clear everything out that the parents collected, you scratch everything when
you come to school, this is behind a lot of the public education. It’s certainly behind a great deal of the
university; you need to destroy the parent’s authority, we sweep their mind
clean of all that stuff they picked up in the home. What do you think they want your kids at four
and five in their school for? They want
to get them out from under you as fast as they can, to destroy your authority,
to undermine the authority of the parents over their children and every
Bible-believing Christian should fight any attempt by the state to take your
children away from you at earlier and earlier ages. It’s an apostate modus figured out by
humanist educators to destroy the home.
And their attempt is to destroy everything out of the mind and start
from scratch. That is the (?) mentality
exactly, except now the educators encourage the child to do it. Before it was just the brat himself; now you
have professional brats teaching them how to be bigger ones and that is the
outcome of modern educational philosophy.
If you want the counter example to this, we don’t have time to go to
these Scriptures but I would refer you to Deuteronomy 6:67, where the parent is
to teach the child in the home and so on.
Now turn to
Proverbs 13:10, “Only by pride comes contention, but with the well-advised is
wisdom.” This is a warning to the child
that says when you stick it with pride, which is a violation of the first
principle, pride—I’m autonomous, I decree what I will learn when I want to
learn it, I will learn what I want to learn and I will not do anything that I
don’t like, there you have the effect of pride.
When you have that out comes contention; contention means violence and
chaos and refers to the fact that God has so structured society that you’re never
going to survive. That’s what it means,
so stick with pride, this proverb says, go ahead, feed on it, and you’re going
to wind up suffering the rest of your life because God has structured the
universe in another way and it never recognizes the pride principle. “But with the well-advised is wisdom,” the
well-advised is the counseled one and the word is in a participle which means
continuously counseled, it’s part of his heritage to pay attention to
advice. So it’s not just well counseled
at one point, it means well counseled as a pattern in his life. He, in other words, sticks and seeks out
counsel, wise counsel.
Proverbs 13:13,
again a warning to the children, “Whoso despises the word” now here the “word”
doesn’t necessarily mean the Word of God, it means the word of the parents,
“Whoso despises the word will be destroyed,” now look at that; that’s saying
that God has made the universe to function… think back, what did Exodus 20:12
say? “He that honors his parents shall
live long.” In who’s world? God’s world.
How did God make His world? So
that this is the operating principle. So
if you’re going to buck the system go ahead but it’s going to spell sorrow for
you. “He that despises the word will be
destroyed, but he that respects the commandment shall be rewarded.” The same principle, respect for the parents
and their teaching.
Proverbs 15:5, see
parents, I’m giving you all sorts of ammunition today. Now here we have another word for idiot and
that’s eviyl, which is like kesil, it’s like that other
word, it’s not this word but it’s like kesil,
it means a person who’s got chaos of the heart, “A fool despises his father’s
instruction,” his father’s musar, and
the word “despise” means to rebel against it, so watch. In the Old Testament they measured wisdom,
even before the kid became an adult by watching how well this child followed
authority in the home. Now again, see
the mentality, the mentality of the Bible is always looking at the parent/child
relationship as to whether the children respect the authority of the
parents. That was a big thing with them,
a, b, c, and f’s didn’t mean anything compared to respect to the authority of
the parents. Do you see that theme; it
comes up over and over and over. Here
the fool constantly rebels against the father’s musar, that means he rebels both against his verbal advice and
against his corporal punishment and when you see a child acting that way,
biblically that is a kesil. Now if you’ll remember some of these words
and when you see them in operation, hopefully not in your own family, but if
you do… if you see them there start learning to associate these words with them
and that will give content to the word.
“…but he that
regards reproof” the word “he that regards” is again a participle and it’s not
regards so much as it’s the word shamar
and shamar is a word to hang on to,
it’s the word that God hangs onto us in eternal security, that’s the same word,
shamar, “and he that shamar’s,” “he that constantly hangs
onto reproof,” it’s submitting to correction, that’s what it is, he takes the
word and he just doesn’t go in one ear and out the other but he holds onto it;
the idea of holding on is opposite to our English idiom, it goes sin one ear
and out the other; the idea is it goes in one and clamps, the trap shuts down
on it and it’s got it. That’s the idea
of holding on. “He that constantly,”
habitually, it’s a pattern of his life, “holds onto correction is
prudent.” Now this is an interesting
word, the word prudent means shrewd; it means the ability to maneuver correctly
in the details of life. It’s not at all
humbling in the bad sense of the word, this is elevating, this is
exalting. This person turns into a
shrewd-y, he is shrewd in Scriptures.
Pick up the mentality behind these verses. This is teaching you, this is the way to be
shrewd, this is what the Bible exalts, shrewdness.
Proverbs 15:10, in
the King James it reads, “Correction is grievous unto him that forsakes the
way,” actually it means that there is going to be grievous correction unto him
that forsakes the way, “and he that hates reproof shall die.” The grievous correction, actually the word
looks like this, evil musar, now all
of musar is tough, but when you take the adjective evil and put in front of it,
you’ve got something that beats (?).
Evil musar, tough musar, now what does this verse
say? “Evil musar belongs to the forsaker, and he that hates reproof and rebels
against it will die.” Now what is evil
musar, for example? I would say that
nine out of ten cases of severe mental illness today in our society is not caused
by organic disturbances; that nine out of ten cases are all caused by this
verse; it’s just a manifestation of evil musar. Evil musar
because of rebellion against parents, rebellion, rebellion, rebellion,
rebellion, rebellion, rebellion, rebellion, rebellion, so they rebel and get
away with it with their parents but they can’t against circumstances in
life. So you can take your pick, you
see.
Proverbs 15:12,
this is a verse I’m going to have emblazoned on my door I think. “A scorner loves not one that reproves him;”
now the word scorner again is the ltz,
here’s the person who’s gone on negative volition for a maximum amount of time
and he despises, literally, the one who is his reprover, that’s his parents in
context of verse 12, he despises his parents.
Why does he despise his parents; it is not because his parents don’t
dress right or something like that, nothing to do with it. Some of the best behaved young people and the
ones that are doing the best, for example, in our framework lessons are people
that come out of what we would call disadvantaged spiritual situations and some
physical disadvantages. Now how
come? It has nothing to do with this
kind of stuff, this has to do with negative volition toward God, let’s face it,
and because God has ordained the third divine institution, negative volition
toward that is negative volition toward God.
That’s what the Bible is teaching.
The ltz is one who is
rebelling against God and he shows it by rebelling against parents. The scorner does not love the reprover, and
he won’t even go to the wise one. He’ll
just stay away. Why? Because he knows he’s going to get (?). Why?
Because he’s too proud to change his life and to get to it.
Proverbs 17:10,
this is dedicated to all parents who every once in a while get very discouraged
after you’ve tried to make a point a thousand times, “Reproof enters more into
a wise man than an hundred beatings into a fool.” The fool here is kesil, and the reproof means verbal. Verse 10 separates the two spheres of
training; the verbal training and the corporal punishment training. And what it’s saying is that just a verbal
reproof can correct a child who is wise, biblically. All you have to do is speak to them and
they’ll correct. Now that is the wise
child, biblically. But the kesil, you can beat him and
beat him and beat him and it still doesn’t make any difference, just trots
right on. Corporal punishment doesn’t do
any good. Now if a child has got to the
point where corporal punishment doesn’t do any good you really can concede, at
least so far from these phrases, you’ve got a serious problem because if
corporal punishment, which is a legitimate thing, we’re going to see that it’s
legitimate, some people don’t believe in it, well, either stay away or rip out
Proverbs because Proverbs teaches it, an if corporal punishment doesn’t solve a
child’s problem and doesn’t straighten him up and he still rebels, you have a kesil or a ltz on your hands, according to
Scripture.
Let’s look at Proverbs
19:25 and with this we’ll conclude our series.
It comes very wisely after 17:10 in the series because the tendency you
will say, well, if corporal punishment doesn’t solve the kid’s problem then I’m
not going to bother with it. Huh-un,
Proverbs 19:25, Go ahead and “Smite a ltz,”
now here’s the verse I was telling you about, watch out for the words, the
first Hebrew word for “scorner” is ltz,
that means the child is, so to speak, beyond help, God help that one because
you’re not going to straighten him out, it’s too late. But go ahead and “smite him” anyway, give him
his corporal punishment. Why? Because he may have a brother who’s a simple
one, a peti, this is the Hebrew word peti, and the peti is a child who is still naďve; peti means the naďve one, it’s not that he’s bad; it’s just that he
doesn’t have any wisdom. He isn’t
trained to good or evil, he’s just kind of duh, no standards you see. And the peti
will learn, so this is a very interesting verse. Go ahead and administer corporal punishment
to a ltz, and if he has other family
that are peti they’ll learn, they’ll
learn by watching the other one suffer.
So this is the
justification to continue punishment on children that you know ahead of time
it’s not going to do any good, because if you back off with a ltz what have you trained the peti to do? If this guy is doing all sorts of things,
tearing things up and so forth, and you say well, we’re not going to bother to
punish him, we’re not going to get my liver in a quiver about it because it
doesn’t do any good so we’ll just ignore it.
Fine, but then you’ve got another kid who’s a peti who’s watching all and that and he says huh, look at that, the
kid does all that and he gets away with it.
What lesson have you graphically given to the peti? You’ve given him a
lesson to go ahead and raise hell, that’s what you’ve given him a lesson
in. So the peti is going to learn by constantly administering to ltz, whether it helps the ltz or not is not the issue according to
this verse. “Smite the ltz, the simple will be aware; reprove
one that has understanding, and he will understand knowledge.” Now the word “reprove” means verbal
correction.
Now verse 25
teaches you another very interesting principle; try to do it mildly if
possible, the Bible teaches corporal punishment, yes, but it doesn’t teach
that’s the only way to punish children, and it doesn’t mean that you always
have to do that. Use as much force, so
to speak, as necessary, but don’t overdo it.
And we come back
now in conclusion, I want you to turn back to Ephesians 6 so we can conclude on
this principle. So far we’ve kind of
grilled down on the authority of the parents but this doesn’t give the parents
carte blanch, let’s turn to Ephesians 6:4.
This is the other side that’s hinted at in Proverbs 19:25; use as much
force but no more than is necessary.
“And you fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up
in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” the “nurture” means the actions,
the physical actions, and “admonition” means the verbal training, bring them up
in that but don’t provoke them to wrath; that means don’t overdo it, don’t go
beyond the legitimate areas; don’t over punish.
That is just as much wrong as under punishing in Scripture. And the Bible is concerned that parents over
punish, that they be over-bearing. Do
you know why? It goes back in conclusion
to what does the third divine institution stand for? The mirror of God and if you overbearing and
over punishing what does the child think God’s going to do. He’s got the bad image of God again.
So you see
parents, you stand in the place God does, a very humbling position but toward
children you are their god and the Bible gives you these instructions and
guidelines to carry out your duty.
Next week we’ll
deal with two more of these training principles.